Provisioning a computing system can be a complicated and error-prone task. The computing system may need to be provisioned with many applications, each of which may need to have settings configured, data entered, and/or files altered. Provisioning multiple computing systems across an entire data center or even several data centers is significantly more complicated, and may involve the tedious and repetitive task of configuring the same enterprise-wide settings again and again.
In the past, provisioning computing systems took place mainly when a new physical computing device was purchased, or when an operating system was upgraded on a computing device. But remote data centers, the cloud, and virtual machines have given rise to an era where dozens or hundreds of new computing systems can require provisioning on a daily basis. Unfortunately, allowing users to configure their own computing systems may violate enterprise security policies that require certain security settings on enterprise computing systems, meaning that a select number of employees may be responsible for provisioning a great number of computing systems. In addition, some traditional systems may require these employees to individually configure applications on every computing system being provisioned, leading to decreased productivity and increased chance for error. Other traditional systems may automatically configure applications by running set-up scripts, locating dependencies, and/or seeding databases, a process which may be both slow and prone to error.
Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for provisioning computing systems with applications.